The Patriot Box Office Review: A Portent of Great Things to Come
by Alan Lueke on February 16, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gadgets
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- Patriot
- HTPC
Final Words
Overall, Patriot’s Box Office represents a great first effort by a company making its first steps into the field of consumer electronics devices. The box’s main feature is to play just about any media file type and bring your media collection to your big screen. It can bitstream the core audio codecs or send LPCM over HDMI, and stream even the the highest bitrate media over a wired 100Mb Ethernet connection. This is all very impressive for a device at a sub $100 price point with mail in rebate at the time of publication from Amazon (or $99 from Newegg). With the addition of the hi-def audio playback in a future firmware update, I would seriously consider this device over some of its more expensive competitors. You would be hard pressed to find more features and functionality at this price point. On PC you can pay $100 just for the software needed to play hi-def movies in Media Center, not to mention the other hardware required to enable hi-def audio. Or you can get this box and a large USB drive and be on your way today.
All that being said, know what your own needs are as the Patriot Box Office is far from a perfect all in one solution. This is not quite a consumer level product yet. It requires some registry tweaking for Windows 7 sharing, and a PC to enable bittorrent and internet content support. The internet content support is far from user friendly and is a ways behind products like Boxee in terms of ease of use and overall implementation. If you want to be able to stream full quality Blu-ray movies this device may work at present, assuming you have a robust enough network and keep the Box Office connected via Ethernet. Overall the capabilities of the supported wireless adapter were underwhelming. It limited us to a sub-10Mbps bitrate.
Also in need of improvement is the very basic GUI. Browsing through endless folders is okay, but if you have multiple TB hard drives like I do, each one full of movies, it can be hard to remember where a specific one is located. A media aggregator or search function would be welcomed here, or something to show cover art the way My Movies does within Media Center. The Box Office's shortcut function wasn’t quite up to the task for me.
There are a few things in the works though, like the aforementioned hi-def audio support, as well as a wireless-n USB adapter. (Ed: Note that 11n networking still rarely comes anywhere near the throughput of even 100Mb Ethernet unless you live in an area with few other wireless signals. With four neighbors running 11g networks, I'm lucky to get a stable 54Mb connection; enable 11n and my WiFi network fails within minutes to hours--and I've tried four different routers!) If you’re not afraid to go wired, you’ll be able to stream your home videos, pictures, music and some nice looking 720p transcodes of your hi-def movies today. If you're not afraid to use the internal HDD bay and some USB drives you can play back a sizeable collection of full definition Blu-ray .iso or .mkv files. You can even stream your standard def .vob files from your PC and save your USB drive space for the hi-def movies. You can also add non-copyrighted content over bittorrent to round out your collection. If your main diet of TV and movies comes from internet sources, then perhaps it may be better to look at a different option. While there is support for aggregators like TVersity, it is far from user friendly or seamless in execution. All in all, the Patriot Box Office is hard to beat at its price point, and really leads one to believe that true affordable “All-in-one” solutions are perhaps just a generation or two away.
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piroroadkill - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
No clue. Seems like the logical thing to do.GeorgeH - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
If you could get your hands on a wireless->wired bridge, it'd be nice if you could use it to nail down where the wireless performance problem is coming from, your network or the device - not even being able to stream a DVD is ridiculous.Is that a fan on page 2? I would have expected passive cooling from such a low-powered device. If it is a fan, a comment on how loud it is would be nice - the shoddy alignment of the power switch makes me nervous that it might be pretty cheap and noisy.
ajlueke - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
I definately think the streaming problem lies with my router. When I moved the PC and the router within 5ft I was still get 76% signal on the 5GHz band. I switch the 2.4GHz band to WPA2 only AES, and to 802.11n only and didn't see any improvement. I am suffering from some throughput issues with this router. Maybe that's what I get for buying the D-link DIR-825 instead of the DIR-855. Netgear has a high end 4X4 MIMO 802.11n bridge lauching this spring. I'll revisit the streaming tests then.There is an internal fan which has been the subject of quite a few complaints on the Patriot forums. Apparently alterations were made to reduce the fan noise. i for one, sitting about 10 ft. from my television could not really hear the fan noise at all. I could hear the high pitched whirring if I put my ear directly against the device, but otherwise, i would not consider this a noisey device by any means.
Gir - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
The fan was the reason I sent it back. Although it isn't that loud it's clearly detectable in calm sequences and it isn't that nice a sound. Even my wife complained and she's far less sensitive of these things.I used an USB stick filled with different content and was quite pleased with it (audio and video (don't have the equipment for surround). Didn't try the network capabilities after deciding that it's too loud for my taste (would have been wired ethernet for me).
ValiumMm - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
For $99, its a pretty good deal, considering their are many media players out their over $300, and only because they include a hard drive, when clearly its not needed. Good reviewthanks Anand
gwolfman - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
I agree.Anand, be sure to let us know when they update the firmware for HD audio codecs and test it out to confirm that it's working!!!! Please!?!?!
Also, if I mount the .iso (full blu-ray rip with menus), does it play/use the menus? or how does that work?
ajlueke - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
Certainly, if you play DVDs in .VOB format and select the .IFO file it utilizes the menus as per the disc. The .iso I used (the Dark Knight) went straight into the movie, and I didn't check if the menu's functioned as normal. I will test that this evening when I get home from the office and post back here.gwolfman - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
Awesome, thanks!ajlueke - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
Selecting the .iso the Patriot Box Office launches straight into the main movie. You can select the audio and subtitles via the remote, but sadly it is not possible to get to the main menu.pomatoso - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Hello,I have a question.
I have a lot of DVD .iso images.
Does the Patriot allow to navigating menù without uncoding DVD in ifo/vob files?
I'm not talking about BR, just traditional DVD.
Thank you.
Pom